The Secret Life of Pets REVIEW
The Secret Life of Pets is a 2016 animated family film made by Illumination Entertainment (the fuckers behind Despicable Me) and distributed by Universal. It stars Louis C.K., Eric Stonestreet, Kevin Hart, Steve Coogan, and Ellie Kemper and was directed by Chris Renaud and Yellow Cheney. The writers for this film are named Brian Lynch, Cinco Paul, and Ken Daurio. They should immediately be banned from writing films due to being massive plagiarists. Where the hell do I start with this piece of shit? I suppose I should start with the plot. Or rather, the plot from Toy Story. In a nutshell, this is the plot of Toy Story: Toy has owner. Toy is happy with owner. Oh no, new toy. New toy is loved by owner. Old toy is disregarded. Old toy and new toy have conflict. Oh no, they accidentally go on a wild adventure after getting lost from their house. Old toy and new toy become friends. Everything is fixed just in time. Here's the plot from The Secret Life of Pets: Dog has owner. Dog is happy with owner. Oh no, new dog. New dog is loved by owner. Old dog is disregarded. Old dog and new dog have conflict. Oh no, they accidentally go on a wild adventure after getting lost from their house. Old dog and new dog become friends. Everything is fixed just in time. I'm not kidding. Go see the movie yourself. Have you ever gone to the supermarket or whatever and see those shitty knock off films like Atlantic Rim and Nebula Conflicts? That's literally what TSLoP is to Toy Story. Actually, no. Scratch that, I don't want to insult Toy Story with this garbage. Even the synopsis is ripping off Toy Story. The secret life of toys, and then the secret life of pets. Did Illumination write themselves in a corner or something? After making two unique movies in the form of Despicable Me, did they just run out of ideas and blatantly plagiarize? It's sad, truly is. And even the original stuff they threw in there was horrendous. The jokes were stale, extremely unfunny, and a good 60% of them were bathroom jokes. A few jokes made me chuckle, I guess, but it wasn't enough to consider the entire film funny, especially when I cringed at the majority of the "humor" in the film. The characters were also about as enjoyable and funny as the jokes. All of them were one dimensional, boring, unlikable cardboard cutouts. Max (Louis C.K.) is easily the most terrible main character ever. He had next to no character traits except his love for Katie and his initial resentment for the new dog in the house, Duke (Eric Stonestreet). Duke is also an unlikable bastard and it's entirely impossible to relate to him. The only thing that was going semi well was his sob story introduced later in the film where he discusses his former owner. I knew for a fact that the owner was going to be dead. Fine. That's not a bad thing, and it could make you cry if it was pulled off. They fucked up the only thing that could've possibly helped this movie. The scene that's supposed to make you cry in pity for Duke is so laughably terrible it killed any chance this movie had at redemption. The other characters are major bullshit as well. There's the rabbit Snowball (Kevin Hart) which was the central antagonist for, like, 30 minutes of the film. And he was also an ex machina during the climax where Max and Duke are trapped at the bottom of an animal control car as water fills it. I mean, I knew they were going to be saved, but Snowball didn't even get fucking redemption before he saved the leads. Then there's Gidget (Jenny Slate) who serves as Max's love interest. She's mainly that one character who has a non-mutual crush on the lead and then ends up being forced into importance. The "love" that blossoms between Max and Gidget at the end is incredibly forced and makes no sense, as Max disregarded Gidget's existence before she led Max's friends in the search for him after he leaves his house. Might I mention the moment Gidget realizes something is wrong with Max is triggered by a fucking MEXICAN SOAP OPERA. Yeah, a cheesy show propels the plot for the rest of the fucking movie. Also, the voice acting is total bullshit and killed Kevin Hart for me. But whatever. The final nail in the coffin is the animation. Like, what the fuck. They copied the human character models from Despicable Me, as if they were too lazy to draw something slightly different. For fuck's sake, even Pixar would be able to draw something different, and they crank out more films than Illumination does. All of the characters look rather basic and have no originality to them. I mean, yeah, you can tell who's who, but little to no thought or detail was put into the character models. God, I hate this film. Plagiarized, uninspired plot, unfunny jokes, boring, one dimensional characters, bad voice acting, and shitty animation. Just go watch Toy Story or Despicable Me if you ever wanted to see this film. Unless you like bleeding from your eye sockets. Or your ears. Or all of your orifices until the sweet release of death spares you from this nightmare. Overall Score: 5/100 Category:RookieKnight Category:Movies Category:Reviews